The book of the Book of Tasty and Healthy Food Published 16 March 2020, with Anna Kharzeeva Today a trip down memory lane for someone who wasn't even there. Anna Kharzeeva runs a cooking school in Moscow. One of the ex-pat mothers who brought their children to learn about Soviet food and culture suggested that Anna write about some of the recipes in The Book of Tasty and Healthy Food. The book was first published in 1939 and for a long time it was the only cookbook available in the Soviet Union. It contained everything you might need to know, not only what to cook and how to do it, but also how to set out a table, how to hold your fork and serve dishes, all the important details. It was a fixture of Soviet life, if not exactly of the kitchen. Anna agreed, but she also insisted that there had to be more to it than cooking her way through the book. She wanted to involve her granny. Unlike Anna, who was born in 1986, Granny had lived through the Soviet era and had plenty of stories to tell about food and about life. Anna Kharzeeva: Yes. It's funny because I was already very close to my grandmother and I had already heard the Lord of the stories. Whenever she told her stories, I was always listening and I was actually interested in what she had to say. But this project made me ask her questions I'd never asked before, and then write it down. And that's been really wonderful. Some things she told me, I never even thought of it, and I'm so glad I've done it while she's still healthy enough to share. There's more actually still to write about her and other people of her generation. Jeremy: Well, I think that the oral history aspect of it is absolutely fascinating because of the contrast between what you write about, what your grandmother says, and what you write about what The Book of Tasty and Healthy Food says. Tell me about the book. Did Russian people like your grandma, did they use it as a cookbook? Anna Kharzeeva: Well, that's a good question. So yes, they did use it as a cookbook. And also they used it as reading material, viewing material, because the images portrayed in the book were so Soviet food p 1 unrealistic. I know people who grew up in Armenia, for example, who say, “we just looked at it as some fancy magazine type images”. Like the way I might look at Vogue and say, “Oh, that's a nice haircut”. You know, I'm never going to get it, the look. Because it was so unrealistic. But the book is so big and it has so many different recipes that you could find recipes in it that you would actually use. And my grandmother did use a lot of the recipes too. But some of the recipes, I would speak to her about it and she would say, “What? You would never find that ingredient” or “I've never heard of this ever in my life. No one has ever made that.” So it's amazing just how many recipes the book contains. And there are recipes that I hated, but there were also recipes that I loved and that I actually have introduced into my life. Jeremy: Okay. Tell me, tell me the one you love the most. Anna Kharzeeva: Well, I really liked that recipe with fried eggs. It's very simple, but the idea is you fry some onion first and then you cut up bread or croutons, you fry them and on top of that you put eggs and tomatoes and you cook it together. I just really liked the croutons in the fried eggs. Or the bean paté, you just crush up some beans and … I did add some of my own spices as well. But it's great. And I have served it at parties and it was always well received. So it was like, well, yeah, here you go. It's a Soviet recipe. Jeremy: For me, of course, I think that the national drink of Russia is vodka, but, you say the national drink of Russia is tea. Really? Anna Kharzeeva: Well, I think they sort of exist in a parallel universe really tea and vodka. I mean, not everybody drinks vodka, obviously. There's lots of people who just don't touch it at all. But as for tea, yes, it's huge. The traditional samovar, it’s a tea urn and the traditional Russian way of having tea is that you sit around the samovar, which has a lot of water in it, 10 liters, maybe five, 10 liters, and you just keep adding, topping up your tea. And so it can take hours, ‘cause everyone loves tea. It's just a thing. It's what you do when someone comes over and you just put on the kettle and you can sit there for hours. I remember as a kid, if somebody would come over and we would spend hours drinking tea. Soviet food p 2 Jeremy: Your grandmother had a tea mushroom. And I read that my thought kombucha, which now is incredibly groovy. Older Russians had this kombucha going in their kitchens? Anna Kharzeeva: Yeah, absolutely. When I was a kid, we had a jar of this mushroom tea, kombucha, on our window sill, and it had this — it sort of looked like jellyfish, you know? — at the top, and it had layers, and you had to sift it and you had to add some tea and some sugar in it. And so then the bacteria would grow, and the older it was, the more sour it was. And you could share it. You could take one layer off and give it to someone else. And I remember, someone would come over to our place and my grandmother would always say, would you like some? And she'd give some away. And we would sometimes have two jars. And they went on for a long time. I remember we always had it in the morning. I remember going, “Oh, it's a bit more sour today, or it’s sweeter today”. And then suddenly it disappeared. And I was trying to remember when it happened, and I asked my Granny. I said, “do you remember when it disappeared?” She said, “no, I have no recollection.” For some reason everyone just dropped it and I don't know what happened. And now we also have this kombucha in the stores. And it was so funny. I went over to a friend's place in Georgia and she said. “Do you know what this is? Do you know what they call it? There’s this new thing, apparently it's a thing now”. And I tried them. I was like, “Oh my God, yes. It's the thing I had as a kid. I had no idea it was fashionable again.” Jeremy: When I think of Soviet food, one of the things I think of obviously is cabbage and, and sauerkraut. But your attempt to make sauerkraut was a complete failure. Anna Kharzeeva: It was. Jeremy: That was following the recipe in the book? Anna Kharzeeva: Yes Jeremy: I mean, sauerkraut’s easy. I make sauerkraut. Soviet food p 3 Anna Kharzeeva: You do? Well, I've never made it. I never had to make it because my grandmother always made it. So I've never had to think about, “Ooh, how do I make that?” If I want it, I just call up my grandmother and say, “can you please make me some sauerkraut?” And she's happy. Jeremy: And I make my own because my grandmother is no longer with us and never did make it for me. Anna Kharzeeva: So. I've never had to do it. I've witnessed old women talking about it. they'd be like, Oh, I use this ingredient. Do you add sugar? No, it's much better not to add sugar. And they're like all into it. They love making it. They love the process. But as a young person, I've never really come across it. Young people don't really make sauerkraut in Russia for the most part because everyone's got a grandmother or a mother who does it. So when I read the recipe, my grandmother said, “I'll tell you the recipe”. When I started cooking it, she said, I'll tell you the recipe. And I said, “no, you can't tell me your recipe. I'm supposed to follow the book's recipe, so don't tell me your recipe.” She was like, “okay, ha ha. Let's see how it turns out.” And so I followed the recipe, but the book doesn't go into enough detail. You know, it's not like modern recipes where they tell you everything and you get videos and photos and all of that. The book is sometimes really vague. It just says, “Oh, take a bunch of this. And mix it with a bunch of that and then cook it till it’s ready”. It's up to, you have to figure it out how you understand that. So I was trying to follow the book to the letter, and I don't have the equipment. I don't have the jars. I don't have the, what was it, they wanted me to use, um, a wooden, like a piece of wood.